remainder of his clip until the hammer clicked and clicked and nothing happened.
His head swam and his ears felt as though somebody had jabbed a sharp stick in them, so loud was the noise of the battle reverberating around the huge empty space of this room. It must have been beautiful once, he supposed, before war came to it. The mural on the ceiling was smoke-damaged and pitted and gouged with bullet holes and long dark scorch marks that all but obliterated the original artwork. It was a shame. He knew some members of the faithful looked disapprovingly on all forms of art, taking the Prophet's admonitions against such images much more generally that Yusuf imagined the Prophet intended.
He ducked as he saw the small, dark shape of a hand grenade come flying through the door. It detonated with a great crash and showered his barricade with deadly shrapnel. How much had changed in such a short time. Not so long ago he would not have dared to advance his own opinions or interpretation of the Prophet's works, especially not when they did not agree with those who were his elders in the faith. But as he wiped a sharp white fleck of bone from his cheeks and contemplated his own demise, he thought he understood much more of what the Prophet wanted from his followers and even the leaders of his people than some of those leaders did.
Honesty, courage, modesty, righteousness, even kindness and mercy-they all had their place in life. Yusuf shook his head again in bitter despair as he saw the bodies of the women and children they had come to protect. There were only three of them left alive. The fedayeen had done what they could to construct a bunker inside where the innocents might shelter, but the Americans had thrown so many explosives in there with such abandon, and some of the children had panicked and broken away from their mothers, and…
His stomach contracted mightily, and he dry wretched for half a minute.
What were they even doing in the city?
What fool had sent them here into a battlefield?
The Americans' fire tapered off for a moment, giving him hope that they might be withdrawing, but it soon returned with increased intensity.
Surely the emir could not have done so, knowing how dangerous it was? Not when there was so much preserved food and even wild roots and vegetables that could be harvested away from the fighting.
He swapped the clip on his Kalashnikov, the last of his ammunition. There had to be some explanation, some mistake, he told himself. Unfortunately, mistakes were as common in war as death and sorrow. Perhaps the emir had been misinformed. After all, he was only a man.
Yusuf lifted the gun above the line of the barricade and fired two single shots in the general direction of the little room where the Americans were trapped. He scolded himself for his lack of faith. Not in God, of course, but in the messengers he had sent to earth. The emir, Ahmet Ozal, all the other fedayeen commanders-they were but men and so subject to the failings of all men. He himself had more than enough experience to understand that. After all, his failure on the island at the start of this great battle had not been a failure of judgment but one of heart, of courage. He had failed his god and his comrades because he was a coward. And now here he was, having been given a chance to redeem himself, and he was blaming others for yet another failure of his own.
Yusuf Mohammed resolved to do better in what little, little time he had left, to stop questioning and doubting and forever finding fault elsewhere when the fault lay within. So many had died for the dream of this new home, where the light and grace of Allah might shine on all who opened their hearts to his love. And yet Yusuf still lived. To what end?
None.
He felt the sickness steal over him again. The nausea of an existence without meaning.
He tightened the grip on his weapon, drew in a deep breath, and prepared to die with God's name on his lips. He pushed himself up from his hiding place and, standing tall, aimed his rifle into the darkened room from which a river of deadly fire was now pouring.
'Allahu akbar!' he cried out as he fired again and again at the enemy.
Flashing lines of tracer zipped past his head while unseen rounds cracked and fizzed all around him. Allah smiled on him, however, protecting him from harm. At least for a brief while. The Americans' fire was a terrible wind that swept over his comrades, cutting down more of them even as he stood in the storm, untouched.
'Allahu ak-'
The cry died in his throat as he saw the strangest and most unexpected of things in all his time in this city of wonders: two large metal buckets covered in tape slowly arcing through the air, turning end over end, trailing a pair of wires as they flew.
Yusuf Mohammed eased off on the trigger of his weapon and stood staring at the flight of those most unusual objects. He had another moment of intense dislocation, a feeling that he had somehow lost his tether to this world and slipped back into another he had lost many years ago. He was a small boy again, standing at the edge of a stream that ran near the little village. The tall thin man with the patches of gray at his temples stood by him, teaching him how to cast a fishing pole. He was not very good, this being his very first time, but the man was not just patient with him, he seemed to take joy in the little boy's squeals and giggles of delight as his brightly colored lure flew everywhere but where it was intended. The sky wrapped itself around them, an endless blue, soft and resplendent with a warm sun.
The old man told him not to look into the sun, but Yusuf Mohammed did not listen. He smiled and smiled, and the sun smiled back on him, filling the whole world with bright, white light. 'Cease fire!' Milosz shouted. 'Cease with the fucking fire already!'
The clatter of weapons fire died down in much the same way his tractor at home wound down after he shut it off. A few bursts stitched the walls, followed by sporadic single pops, finally punctuated by a single hollow thump.
An ear-piercing wail reverberated off the marble interior of the reading room. Milosz could just barely make out, through the smoke and mist, a woman cradling a child in her arms. She rocked back and forth, adding her own screams to the baby's protests.
The fighting had shattered the cathedral-like windows, letting the driving rain pour inside. As the rain dispersed the smoke, Milosz could see them.
Bodies. They lay strewn amid the tables and chairs of the reading room. They held children close, curled up with their backs to the door he and Gardener had just fought their way through. Along the walls were stacks of canned goods, jars of sauces, meats, and other food that was still edible, if a bit questionable.
A can of pineapple rolled to a stop against Milosz's boot. Through a hole it leaked a thick yellow syrup onto the floor, which mixed with the dark blood of a little girl who was missing the back of her head.
Two of the surviving militia men who had covered the assault from the upper level looked at each other.
'How many frags did we throw in here?' one of them asked.
The other shook his head. 'I have no idea.'
'Too many,' Gardener said, wiping her brow. She was sweating profusely despite the cold rain, preversely reminding the Pole of a wheel of cheese. 'Or not enough. It doesn't really matter now, does it?'
'Are we going to get in trouble for this?' the one who had asked about the frags wondered.
'I doubt it,' Milosz said. 'They will probably give you medals. And one hundred and forty new bucks this month. Probably.'
51
Kansas City, Missouri The city never slept. The demands of reconstruction meant there was always something going on somewhere, and Kip took solace from that as he sat at his desk in the early morning, eyes burning with fatigue, struggling to write something original in each letter of condolence. Handwriting each letter, each comma, and restoring his rusty cursive script after decades of disuse helped provide a sort of penance for the men and women dying on his command. 'Dear Mrs. Kohler,' he wrote, ignoring the cramp in his fingers, 'I am terribly sorry to have to write you this letter…'
He had begun writing after a long night of briefings and video meetings with his military chiefs, and the brief, frustrating talk with Agent Monroe. It was nearly four-thirty before he finished the last of the letters, and his head swam with fatigue. He was sick of it and desperately wanted nothing more than to climb into bed next to Barbara back at home and fall asleep for twenty years, waking only when all this was history. Instead he spent the next
